If you’ve been reading my stuff for awhile, you’ll know that I’m a bit of a neuroscience geek, particularly with my approach to coaching. So it’s probably not a complete surprise that I ended up down the neuroscience rabbit hole when I went researching the answer to two questions that were facing me …
What made my relationship with my horse so important to me?
And, what could I do to make everything better?
A deep dive into neurobiology helped answer the first question because it’s one on which a great deal of research has been done – mostly because SO MANY PEOPLE know that their relationship with their horses is important and special and being human we want to understand that better.
The answer is that horses are the only prey animal with which we have developed a social bond in all our millennia of domestication. Dogs and cats, our most popular domestic companions, are fellow predators. Cows, sheep and goats are prey but we’ve never developed the bond. But horses are prey and we have this incredible bond with them. What is it about horses?
It appears that not only does the physical relationship between horse and rider form the basis for neural interaction but adopting the animal’s natural form of communication allows for real time partnership … in other words, harmony (Janet L. Jones, 2020)
The holy grail of riding.
What is harmony? It appears that the neural link allows both the horse and rider to achieve a state of flow – when both are totally immersed in the activity, paying no attention to distractions and with time seeming to pass without notice. Horse and rider enter into this state of mind together. Every rider who has ever experienced this knows exactly what it is, and everyone who has ever witnessed it happening knows that it is the most beautiful expression of the equine human partnership.
Of course, achieving flow is not easy.
The horse must be in the correct physical condition to bear the rider and free from discomfort, stress and fear and the rider must also be in the correct physical AND MENTAL condition to able to clearly communicate with the horse, skilled enough to transmit the correct messages and mentally relaxed enough to be able to be fully present. In other words, both must be physically capable, mentally free from distraction, able to focus totally on each other and be present in the task at hand.
This means there can’t be any pressure… just time and consistency. Even then, it can take time to get into flow and it’s also unrealistic to expect that flow can be achieved in every session, or even for very long. But it is true that once you have experienced flow with your horse it is easier and easier to return to that place, because you both know how.
Clearly, one of the things that prevents us from achieving harmony and flow is our own physical and mental condition.
Most of us are not in the best of physical shape to be riding, especially if we’re over 40 and the natural advantages of a younger body start to recede and our innate handed-ness starts to become more obviously intrusive. For me, this is the Pilates link – to help understand one’s own body and to work on balance and control.
The next step is to work on the mind.
We need to find the mental control to remain present, calm and focussed. For me, this is the qi gong link – to learn to stay present and focussed, being able to ignore the mind monkey and to find the connection to the energy of the planet.
Our horses, by comparison, are always in that connection. So if they are physically fit – being trained gymnastically and biomechanically correctly and well able to take their rider, with properly fitting saddles and good feet and all the rest of the physical requirements taken care of, living a decent horsey life with lots of friends, turnout, food and shelter – then the only thing we need to concern ourselves with is their mental state in the arena.
And we can’t help them with that if we are unable to help ourselves.
So my programs are based around helping riders do just that – identify and train their physical bodies and work at the same time on their minds – showing them how to achieve peace of mind and mental control so that they can bring the uniquely human piece to the equation.
I do this through The Six Lessons – a course developed from everything I learned from my horse in eighteen years of being his partner, along with all my work alongside him in Pilates, qi gong, kung fu, martial arts, traditional Chinese medicine and coaching. It’s designed to help my clients identify and work with their specific requirements to achieve better physical and mental states. In the end of course the aim is to aid their ability to achieve harmony.
Because remarkably, not only does their riding improve but so do all other aspects of their lives.
#neuroscience #coaching #mindfulness #equestrian #harmony #presence
The Unintentional Mariner 